


count my cards, watch 'em fall

by VolxdoSioda



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Time Travel, older!Joker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 12:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20796395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VolxdoSioda/pseuds/VolxdoSioda
Summary: Akechi likes to think himself the biggest fish in the pond. Not so, these days. Thistime.





	count my cards, watch 'em fall

"You know, you're pretty young to be working at some place like this."

Joker doesn't look up from where he's stirring the curry. Four turns to the left, four turns to the right, just as Sojiro taught him a lifetime ago. He may hate Akechi, but he's sworn to serve his customers all the same, and he keeps his vows even now. This batch of curry needs to be perfect, which means focusing on it, and not on the irritating _thing _sitting on a chair, watching him with eyes that don't carry any sort of warmth.

Once, Joker - Akira - had believed the best of this man. Had trusted that facade.

Never again.

"Not going to say anything?" Akechi asks softly, and the blade lurking in the depths of his eyes gleams, quicksilver, a threat to anyone else.

Not to him. Not to Joker, who has taken heist after heist after heist all for the sake of the futures of the children he guards and gathers to him. Compared to what he has already lived through, Akechi is nothing but the faintest shadow of a mockery. 

He almost misses those days, sometimes. When it was seven instead of one. But he remembers all too easily how his Confidants got dragged into his messes, how nothing he did was ever good enough, and word smeared them all with the same brush. There's no need for that, anymore. 

"You know," Akechi says lightly. "In some societies, silence is considered admittance."

A barb, a baited trap, trying to snag him. Draw him in, make him fight back. 

Joker doesn't take the bait. Instead, he flips the trap.

"In modern-day Japan, it's highly illegal to use wiretapping, Akechi-kun. I suggest, unless you want me bringing this whole building down around your ears, you'll take it off my and my friend's phones."

He says it in the tone learned from Futaba, that casual _oh bother I've forgotten to buy milk _tone. It's a tone that once threw him and the others for a loop, especially given what she used it on. Now he uses it himself, and enjoys watching Akechi falter, if only for a handful of seconds.

"You can't prove--" He starts, and then stops when Joker reaches into his pocket, and produces the chat logs between himself and his little sister.

**Futaba: ** _Are you aware we've got taps on all our phones + Sojiro's stuff? Also bugs. Like. Everywhere. I took the ones out of the bathroom because ew, but otherwise, can you tell Creepy Ace Stalker to gtfo?_

"Unless you're insinuating my sister is making things up, in which case I would say you might want to reconsider that line of argument, considering I found over seventeen bugs in our attic alone. You know. Where I sleep." He digs into his pocket, and pulls one of the many he's kept on him out, laying it oh-so-delicately before Akechi. "I can appreciate spirit, and ingenuity, but this isn't that. This is your pride demanding you find evidence for something that doesn't exist here, Akechi-kun. And it's starting to grate."

Akechi's throat bobs. He evidently hadn't considered just who - although perhaps _what _at this point would be a far better word to use - he was going up against. "You don't know it was me."

Joker laughs, low and sinister. He checks the curry will hold for the moment, and then casually leans over the counter, until he's inches away. He lowers his voice. This is between him and Akechi, after all. Nobody else.

"Those bugs didn't start appearing until you did, little Ace Detective. You want to play with the big boys? Learn big boy tricks. Stop stalking my friends, stop staking out their school, stop harassing my family, and stop wiretapping and bugging places you have no right to be."

"The police--"

"Do you even understand the position you're in?" And now he takes what he has learned from Iwai and Sojiro in equal parts, a stern hand and the threat of teeth, and puts it to use. "Wiretapping and bugging without a warrant, without probable cause, without so much as a _hint _of a reason, puts you in a very bad light. And even if you got the police on your side, how much trouble would you be in with the common people if I took a few pictures, snagged a few recordings, and put it up online? How _fast _do you think all your _friends in high places _would change their tune then?"

Akechi says nothing. There's a set to his jaw that says he knows he's been bested - and he hates it. Loathes it enough to choke on it. Joker can't see his eyes, but he imagines they're blazing with hate right about now. 

He pulls back, checks the curry. Time to stir again.

"And in the future, Akechi-kun, you'll find yourself another coffee shop to frequent. I don't ever want to see you here again, not even for business, not unless you've got a warrant with someone's name, picture, and a crime on there."

"Threatening someone--"

"Oh, Akechi-kun," Joker laughs again, and dishes up the curry, sliding the piping hot bowl across to the little non-threat siting before him. "That wasn't a threat. I don't make threats."

Akechi stares at him, and Joker smiles, and lets some of his old personality dance around the edges of his smile. "I make promises. Now. Eat up, and get out. And don't ever come back."


End file.
